It’s confession time. Some of my devoted readers are not going to like it. It’s related to my disdain for certain genres of music so if you’ve got a strong constitutional defense for the music you love you may want to read the ‘New Yorker’ in your smoking jacket instead. Or track down re-re-re-runs of the Grand Ol’ Opry on TVland. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool music snob. I have no patience or interest in Jazz, The Blues or Country music.

Full disclosure. I don’t do Country music. I’ve never been a fan of those Good Ol’ Boys singing – through their noses, I might add – about dogs and bar fights and pick-up trucks and hurtin’ songs about how a good woman gone done them wrong or some endless road trip of wide open spaces carrying a rack full of guns because: FREEDOM!

I swear to God, when Kim Grant is not pushing me toward something, she is. A simple post of a video in her last newsletter (see the link at the beginning of the Notes section) regarding The Grand Ole Echo dragged me in an unsuspecting direction, this time to a group out of L.A. calling themselves Stone Darling. Kim, of course, knows my Achilles Heel (Whispering Pines, for all who don’t know) and knows I cannot resist a short walk through the pines, and I’m pretty sure she posts these things just for me because I ask around occasionally and none of my friends seem to know anything (but come to think of it, they don’t know anything about anything). This time, though, I’m not sure what she’s gotten me into. Want a hint? Read this bio written by one Eric Filipkowski: